


A Forgotten Piece

by ChrisBranNorling



Series: Guild Wars 2 Stories [12]
Category: Guild Wars 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Cisgender Character, Gen, Nonbinary Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-10-30 09:38:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10874088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChrisBranNorling/pseuds/ChrisBranNorling
Summary: The past comes out in an unlikely place.1328 AE





	A Forgotten Piece

Shuffling and heavy footfalls draws the attention of one Creator Briones, she picks up her pistol and quietly makes her way to a fallen pillar to attempt to peer around it. As she does, she’s greeted with one of the most peculiar sights she’s ever born witness to, even in her illustrious career within the Order of Whispers.

An asura wearing well-made leather armour marches their way through the open path. A heavy pack makes them bow forwards over a crate in their arms, almost obscuring the distinctly Priory hammer strapped tightly to their back. Behind them trudges a very large … nuhoch? Briones is pretty sure that’s what this subspecies of hylek are called. Its red skin glistens in the soft light, stopping for a few moments as its partially webbed feet almost overtake the asura before starting again, easily catching up. An even larger pack is lashed to its back, complementing the one it grips.

She hurries back to her small camp, grabbing a thin book and leafing through the pages as she returns to her outlook. Finally reaching the page as the strange duo reaches the tunnel up to the Command Centre.

 _Rata Novus Permissions_  
_Taimi (asura, civilian)_  
_Agent Zildi (asura)_  
_Kott (asura)_  
_Commander Aina Brownbark (norn, report to)_  
_Tactician Dinn (asura)_  
_Keeper Eliurias (sylvari, watch)_  
_Slayer Caldien (sylvari, watch)_  
_Crusader Rancalagen (asura), cum Augni (nuhoch, comes rarely but regularly)_  
_Scholar Drephan (assume unknown sylvari, logged by Crusader Rancalagen, watch)_  
_Creator Elaine Briones (human)_

Briones feels the tension leak out of her shoulders, thankful that it isn’t another civilian she’d have to scare away.

 

The steady hum of active tech is much stronger in the Command Centre than in the lower level of Rata Novus, and it sets Rancalagen at ease in a way that he hasn’t felt in a week. His shoulders sag a little too much and he loses his grip on the crate, but before it falls, it is lifted by Augni’s, her own bag transferred to one enormous hand.

Augni’s tongue drags up and over her left eye as he motions for the crate. When she doesn’t hand it back, he lets out a displeased huff, stretching his shoulders against the weight on his back. The scarred flesh of his shoulders slides easily under the padding of his new armour, and he almost regrets replacing his tattered Vigil uniform for a moment.

Rancalagen walks up to a console, and frowns up at it before shrugging off his pack and scrambling onto the stone surface. It blinks on as he gets his feet firmly planted on the rim. Light blue letters, words, and designs flit across the screen. After a moment of just staring at it, Rancalagen turns to the left of the three diamond-shaped screens, and jumps over to it.

His landing only briefly disturbs the screen, the holographic circle flickering in and out of existence before solidifying. A few lines curve through it, all going through a central point in the lower right corner, indicating the asura gate a few yards away. Some of the lines go through other dots, and Rancalagen taps one on the left side of the circle. The large dot gets smaller as the one he tapped increases in size. The asura gate boots up.

“Gate-tuned-to-Class-5-citizen-labs.” Drones the console.

Going back to the larger screen, Rancalagen shifts some words around, opening some things, and tapping in a command before going back over and selecting the once large dot.

“Retune-to-Class-1-Research-Lab-post-two-person-travel.”

Pulling his pack back on, Rancalagen points first to Augni, then the gate. She lumbers over, hesitating in front of it before striding through. Rancalagen follows.

Gate travel has always made Rancalagen uncomfortable. One instant of nothingness, completely at the mercy of something outside his reach. He grits his teeth, innards feeling as if they’re being yanked forwards before he steps out the other side of the gate.

The first thing he sees, aside from Augni shifting back and forth impatiently, is the husk of a golem, mossed over. Rancalagen rubs a hand over its energy plate as he passes, his gloves catching and taking off some of the plant matter. Cable clusters set into the ceiling makes the hall bright with natural light, very different from the dark Command Centre.

Squinting to see passed the lenses of his dirty and cracked goggles, Rancalagen keeps going down the hall, waiting to hear the scraping of stone upon stone over Augni’s footsteps behind him before he goes into one of the labs.

That doesn’t stop him from making cursory glances into the few that he passes. The Class 5 labs all belonged to golemancers, before Rata Novus’s fall, which was easy to surmise when he and Drephan first entered the area. And now that he’s back from the Gilded Hollow, he should be able to take some time to rifle through them, once he’s located Drephan that is.

As he keeps walking, he starts to frown, and stops. Anything beyond the first five labs hadn’t been checked out before he left, so he lays down his pack, gesturing for Augni to do the same. She mumbles something in her language, almost looking sad when Rancalagen unstraps his hammer. Letting it lay over his shoulders, Rancalagen steps forwards, leather boots making barely any sound against the mossy stone floor, though circumvented by Augni’s heavy steps.

Making his way through the hall with little trouble, Rancalagen finally sees a faint blue glow emanating from one of the open archways, as well as a pockmarked stone hammer lying head down against the wall. His four fingered hand grips the handle, pulling it to a standing position, before letting it fall back against the wall with a sharp crack.

A hollow “uwah!” accompanies the thud of a body hitting the floor.

Rounding the corner, Rancalagen is privy to the sight of humanoid shaped ley stone lying splayed across the floor. Hazy blue ley energy wafts steadily up from it. The odd horns on top of its head graze against the stone as its head moves to take him in.

“Ran!” The body flips over and scrambles up before rushing over to him. One too thin arm reaches around his torso and hefts him up, the other shorter arm providing some support. His goggles press unpleasantly to his face as he’s crushed against warm stone.

“I’ve missed you,” Drephan pivots in a circle. “Though it doesn’t feel like it’s been a week yet.”

A shuddery breath works its way out of Rancalagen, and he goes limp, hammer slipping out of his hand to thud against the floor. There’s a moment’s peace before Augni shouts something, no doubt directed at Drephan, who retorts meekly. Their chest hitches on every gruff word of the nuhoch language, but they do lower Rancalagen back to the floor. His goggles catch on a jut of ley stone on Drephan’s chest, but they snap back into his face when it slips off.

“Sorry, Ran.”

Rancalagen pulls the goggles down to rest on his neck so he can rub his stinging skin. Through the blur of his shit vision, he can see Drephan reach up to scratch their cheek, but they stop when all they meet is stone.

“S’fine,” he mumbles, realigning his goggles to take a look at the room. It’s more of an archive instead of a lab, data crystals lying scattered everywhere. Though, one place they are absent is a small pile of bones next to one of the wall consoles.

Picking his hammer back up and strapping it to his back, Rancalagen meanders over, careful not to step on any of the crystals.

“I made my way over here the third day after you left, definitely an archive from what I have translated with the ciphers you made.” Drephan walks over to an activated console, left hand commanding the holographic screen with ease. “Though instead of anything useful to the Pact, it is mostly the personal research of golemancers. As we surmised our first day here.”

Humming a vague accession, Rancalagen squats near the pile of bones. An asura, of course, and he tries not to pay attention to the stained ground below it, looking instead at the numerous dusty glass vials scattered around within reach.

“I was curious about them too,” Drephan says, gesturing for Rancalagen to come over when he looks back. They slot in another data crystal while pointing at a small pile. “These are all in the same code, and found around them. It’s akin to some of the others you’ve deciphered for me, but too different for me to work through it.”

Rancalagen unstraps this hammer again, and leans it against the wall. “Ya need ta keep yer’s with ya.”

“Well, I did until I got here,” they pout, grabbing their large tome and settling down with enough room for Rancalagen to work at the console.

Augni growls something, as much as a giant frog can growl, and stomps off as Drephan sighs and opens their book. “She said goodbye to you, Ran.”

Grunting, Rancalagen taps open the information stored in the crystal, and when the words show up on the holographic surface, the familiarity almost becomes a punch to his gut. He knows this form of Asuran script.

 _Day 2035_  
_With the utmost indubitableness, I can say I have ascertained the whereabouts of Flomm’s laboratory.  
Oh what my progenitor would say to me right now. ‘How dare you, Zrikk. How dare you misappropriate your life in the pursual of this Rata Novus.’ She would know that I didn’t come for her, Kedd, or even Bladdi, my cloyingly sweet sister. I told myself I didn’t, at any rate. It’s what I told myself as I shredded my hands searching through the rubble for their bodies. And it’s what I tell myself now, as I prepare to spend the last days of my life in her laboratory._

Zrikk. Rancalagen can only stall at the flood of memories.

Him, no, Torrp. Torrp sitting next to his mother, back before he had even met Cirruel, as she wove an epic tale. Exile, a hidden city, redemption, and the fall. How an asura named Zrikk survived, and vowed to make it back, even as a small progeny. How Rata Sum disavowed him, and the existence of the fallen city, called him a mad even in the face of his genius. How he cared enough to share his life with her, but not so much as to stay. ‘Your father,’ she’d said, ‘was a fool.’

Things he hadn’t thought of for almost ten years pound through his skull, the growing ache only held at bay by cautious fingers trailing up his spine.

“Ran?” Drephan moves their hand to grasp his shoulder, turning him around. The book is moved to the floor by their other hand as they urge Rancalagen into their lap.

Not attempting to fight it, Rancalagen only shifts against them as he’s tucked into the crook of Drephan’s legs. The chin of the ley stone helm covering Drephan’s head rests on his head, and the pulsing warmth of the ley energy seeps into him.

 

_ Day 3962  
Not even a half year after I imbibed my last elixir and I can feel the burden of time on my shoulders. I have not long left in this world, though there is some satisfaction that I’ve postponed the inevitable for so long. _

_ Day 4001  
There hasn’t been anything new to read here in the last month, and I will swear that I’ve grown into this floor with now long I feel I’ve been sitting here. I can’t get up. _

_ Day 4013  
Simmot said she was gravid before I left, I only just remembered. I hope it was a girl, because I would have named her Bladdi. _


End file.
